Known pen-based handheld devices for displaying pages of electronically stored information have used a variety of ways to facilitate page turning. One of these, the Amstrad `PenPad`, has a small screen with forward and backward facing arrows displayed next to the screen. The user can turn pages in the desired direction by touching the arrows. Holding the pen down achieves a constant predetermined page turning rate allowing the user to `riffle` rapidly through pages in succession, although without being able to control the page turning rate.
Another known device is the Sharp `Action Manager` which is another pen-based handheld device in which pages are displayed with turned up corners. On tapping such a corner with the pen, the page turns. There is no mechanism for riffling rapidly through pages.
Neither of these devices provides a naturalistic page turning facility.
Many word processing packages support a vertical scroll bar which scrolls through pages of electronically stored information as if they were attached top to bottom and this is also the approach used in the Tandy `Zoomer` which is another pen-based handheld device. The disadvantage of this approach is that the scroll bar takes up screen space, which is a particular disadvantage for small screen devices. If there is no scroll block, the scroll facility is tantamount to a pair of arrows similar to the arrangement in the Amstrad PenPad.